Halloween really is one of the coolest holidays. I mean, when else can I get away with wearing ladybug deelybops on my head?
When else do I have an absolute, fool-proof excuse to have massive bowls of candy lying around, and to unabashedly dig into each individually-wrapped sticky treat and justify it by saying I'm "reminiscing"? I'm hanging the battery-powered red-eyed bat that flies in circles on the porch, and then I'm going to watch the little tykes rock back on their heels, their eyes bulged, when they see it coming toward them in their adorable little costumes. Don't worry; most of them end up agreeing that the bat's just about the most wonderful thing ever. Yep, Halloween is one of the greats. We've got some great treats for you in the column this month, too – and not the kind that gives you the jitters and ruins your teeth.
Peggy Shumaker, Alaska’s Writer Laureate, joins the Poetry Column this month with five poems and an interview that gives very interesting and learned insight into Alaska’s history and current issues. I have admired Ms Shumaker since I met her on the campus of the University of California, Riverside, where I learned how brilliant and immensely kind she is. Her poetry, also brilliant, makes me feel like I’m experiencing something through another’s senses – hearing what they hear, seeing what they see. Peggy is so good with sounds and images that at the end of each poem, I feel a bit like I’m reentering my own life with a new perspective from which to understand the world.
I am so excited this month to welcome our two new Associate Poetry Editors, Mari L’Esperance and JP Reese! They have brought us six stunning poets this month.
Mari writes:
For the month of September, I’m very happy to share the work of three poets:Warren Hayman’s poems are lyrically graceful and deeply heartfelt, reminding us that a relationship with death is necessary to being fully human. These are poems “so strong and dark … / they seemed to hold the world” by a poet who is not interested in dazzling us with surface flash or intellectual cleverness, but with music, attention to craft, and authentic feeling.
What drew me to Marie Gauthier’s poems is their feminine tonal and formal quality. I love their fluid, dreamlike pacing, their quiet depth, and careful craftsmanship. These poems of relationship, of mothering, of delicate noticing are simultaneously inward—“fluttering in their ruched / caves—” while being firmly grounded in natural phenomena and the physical world.
Lines like “Fog at sea is a thief who steals / the bones right out of things” captured my attention in Maureen Donatelli’s poems. Donatelli amply demonstrates her appreciation for the power of a well-placed image, reminding us that “poetry // finds its way on those involuntary / convulsions of breath, swallowing // the whole wild delicious world down.”
I wish you good reading!
JP writes:
Melody Gee's lyrical sensibility explores the progression of nature's rituals as metaphor for an individual's tenacity in the face of decline and death. These poems, "Swallows in Harbin," and "Overwintering" are not, however, dour warnings of doom. Rather, they celebrate the connection between all things with precision and grace, use hope as an underpinning against inevitable loss. "Overwintering" states, "Our young cry in all seasons. / Neither can the mandevilla stop / sending flowers to bud, even into the iced air," implying in this lovely comparison that humanity, in all its raggedness, will persevere to send out bud and bloom again, no matter the cost or the odds.
Jen Mehan is an emerging poet on the cusp of entering grad school and an MFA program. Her work embraces the south, particularly Georgia, in all its paradox. "Toombs, Georgia" examines the new south, its progressive ideas, modernity, and equality entwined with the old, its rigid ideology and societal boundaries now gone underground. Mehan's poem suggests the old ways, and the shame of them for a newer generation, still echo in the subconscious of those whose roots spread wide beneath the red of Georgia's clay. "Lullaby" is a more personal poem about growth and change, an examination of childhood from a speaker just emerging from the cocoon of protected youth into a world where being unsure is the norm and looking back chastens and clarifies.
Roger Jones' work captures a world-weary voice chastened by a life that has reached midpoint, aware of its own mortality but also determined to drive on in the face of an uncertain future. "Water Left On All Night" harkens back to the sensibility of James Wright's masterful poem "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" with Jones' final line resonating the epiphanic moment that often emerges from the most banal of situations. "Flats Fixed" is a piece about memory and the impulse to recover the familiar. The poem suggests that nostalgia cannot recover a past that has no place in a world utterly changed, but that one must persevere, cling to connections that sustain even while it acknowledges the unfamiliar detritus that shrouds the crooked path leading us home.
Again, thanks so much, J.P. and Mari! We’re so grateful to have you.
Now, time to make a little tea or coffee, dig into the Halloween candy (there’s plenty of time to buy more) and read some amazing poetry. Enjoy! (nom nom)